All Media Coverage

Media Coverage

Australian women would get better policy outcomes if women led economic agencies, and if women’s representation increased in the federal parliament, according to the shadow assistant treasurer, Andrew Leigh.

The World Today with Eleanor Hall, Elizabeth Jackson | The Reserve Bank of Australia has expressed concern about a dramatic reduction in the number of students taking up the study of economics at high school and university.

Economics is the organising frame for almost every policy decision made by government, and the lack of gender and other forms of diversity in economics is suppressing alternative views on what effective policy looks like. In today’s analysis, Danielle Wood (@danielleiwood) of Grattan Institute provides an analysis of the poor female representation in Australian economics, how this negatively impacts on decisions, and what can be done to address the situation. Danielle is also the Chair of the Women in Economics Network.

The Conversation Duygu Yengin, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Adelaide |What is economics all about? Ask a person in the street and the most likely answer will be along the lines of “economics is about money, earning money, something similar to business and finance”. But economics is more than just the study of money – there is a whole other side of economics that many people have never thought of. It is time we spread this message to attract more students, especially women and those from minority backgrounds, into economics.

A refreshing and measured address by Professor Miranda Stewart, Professor Rachel Ong and Danielle Wood from the WEN (Women in Economics Network) at the National Press Club in Canberra gave an overview of the 2017-18 Budget that reflected on important aspects of tax policies, housing, projections and revenue with hopes of a “balanced budget still a distant fantasy”.

Australia’s economics profession and our broader policy debates are set to benefit from the nationwide launch of the Women in Economics Network (WEN) which will address the profession’s gender imbalance by promoting women’s involvement in economics.

Social media is easily excitable. Every day, it seems, there’s an eruption of anger and condemnation almost hourly. Be it real or fake, some sort of news has someone somewhere vowing condemnation or a boycott or a march of some kind. In almost every case a mountain has been made out of a molehill.

If I ask you to picture an economist, what’s the first image that comes to your mind? I’m guessing it’s a man, probably with grey hair, a suit and a certain air of authority. And that’s not surprising: that is pretty much the public face of economics in Australia.

This article was written for Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (Visit their website)

When Virago, the international publisher for books by women and the New Statesman magazine announced the inaugural winner of their Women's Prize for Politics and Economics in 2016, there was a flurry of press interest asking "Where are the women economists?" This followed criticism of The Economist's list of most infuential economists in 2014, which (excluding incumbent central bankers) included not one women.

My mother was a "computer", back in the days when the term applied to people. Plucked from high school because of her prowess at maths, she was put to work at the Weapons Research Establishment at Salisbury in South Australia, performing the calculations that enabled the rockets fired from Woomera to go where they should.